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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28546560">The Villain In Your History</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariuspunmercy/pseuds/mariuspunmercy'>mariuspunmercy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Dream Team SMP Spoilers, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, Insecurity, Self-Doubt, rated t because schlatt smokes, reupload, some ptsd but nothing too bad, tubbo's sad and imagines things</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:28:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,877</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28546560</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariuspunmercy/pseuds/mariuspunmercy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"I never got to say goodbye and he didn't let me say hello."</p><p>Or, Tubbo visits the grave he made for Tommy. Someone who's not supposed to be there visits him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Toby Smith | Tubbo &amp; TommyInnit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Villain In Your History</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>first work of 2021 woooo :D</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Tubbo never would’ve thought. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He never thought he was going to see Tommy again, for one. He thought he was going to stay split from his best friend forever, wandering aimlessly with a spinning compass and a moral dilemma. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>To find him in L’Manberg, apparently alive and kicking it with </span>
  <em>
    <span>Technoblade, </span>
  </em>
  <span>was albeit, a shock to his entire world. But shocking wasn’t the only thing it was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In that moment, a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Tommy was right in front of him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He wasn’t dead. </span>
  </em>
  <span>It took a solid minute of repeating it to himself before he got the courage to walk up to him, to really take a good look at him, and start processing the situation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tommy wanted nothing to do with him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tubbo tried not to chuckle under his breath. It’s probably disrespectful to laugh at someone’s grave, even if they aren’t dead. He isn’t dead. He isn’t-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dream had been the one to find him in Logstedshire, passed out and cold in the rain. He’d explained the moments leading up to Tommy’s death: blowing up his tent and nether portal as he slowly descended into madness. He sent Tubbo back to L’manberg, hardly giving him proper time to wake up and accept the information he’d been given. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Honestly, he doesn’t remember much from that night. But he does know that he believed Dream with certainty, and in hindsight, he should’ve never done that. Not now, not when Tommy was exiled, and definitely not when dealing with something as sensitive as Tommy’s death. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He remembers dropping everything to dig a grave. Ranboo had wanted to be there with him, but he refused to speak with anyone once he got home. He took his own shovel, dug the grave, and topped it off with a piece of stone at the top. A grave for someone who had never died in the first place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kneeling next to the grave after everything just disappointed him. He paid for flowers at Niki and Puffy’s shop every day and took them to the grave. He set them down in the dirt, gave himself a minute to compose, and left to do his duties. Armor may have not been allowed, but he wore his mask and never allowed it to slip down. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And every day, when he woke up from his nightmares of dying, he didn’t have anyone to clutch onto. Tommy always filled that void, rubbing him gently on the back or fetching him a glass of cold water. When his job got too difficult, too stressful to the point where he cried until he knocked himself out at his desk, there was nobody there to make him laugh until his stomach hurt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hid away from the nation now. He couldn’t stand to see Quackity trying not to appear smug for having been right about Dream, or the way Ranboo couldn’t meet his eyes, or even Phil’s empty house because the man had left as they descended further into chaos. The pity from the others was something he didn’t want. It was just about the last thing he wanted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tubbo doesn’t know what he’s doing. He never wanted to be the leader of a nation. He accepted because Wilbur believed in him, but no one’s been that confident in him since his initial inauguration. Absolutely no one, and that includes Tommy. Yeah, he wasn’t excused from that just because he was dead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Believed to be dead. He’s not dead. He’s alive and siding with the same person who shot a firework between his eyes that tore him to pieces. The colors that clashed against the yellow box still plagued his nightmares, his daydreams, and even the image of his chest when he looked in the mirror and saw his burns. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>White, scarred flesh ran across the entirety of his front. The burns didn’t do anything to hide it. In that little box, he had raised his hands to try and dull some of the pain. When he woke up from his nightmares, he grasped at the spot as if he could do anything to save himself now. Even buttoning up his shirt was hard to do when it first happened. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tommy put a reassuring hand on his shoulder every morning, giving his support with everything he had. He made things a little easier, helping him take things day by day until he could get dressed by himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His official presidential suit was never easy on him. It’s turned into hell ever since he started buttoning it alone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His finger lifted on its own to trace the name on the headstone, but he stopped himself. There’s no point in even being here anymore, sitting on the lump of dirt by himself at two in the morning. It’s the first time he’s been alone today, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>god </span>
  </em>
  <span>did he need to be alone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ironically, he’s never been </span>
  <em>
    <span>alone</span>
  </em>
  <span> until now. He’s followed Tommy into everything. He fought alongside him for his discs, became a spy and risked his life to help him, and sacrificed </span>
  <em>
    <span>everything </span>
  </em>
  <span>just to be by Tommy’s side. Decorating his own execution, and for what? To be compared to a man whose death is now celebrated?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The respect he’s gained since becoming president is slowly slipping from his grasp. His citizens don’t care for him, his cabinet wants to force his hand at everything, and his best friend has now put all his hard work on the line. He has no support. No one to cry to about this, no one to hug him and tell him everything’s going to be okay like Tommy did after his execution. After Wilbur made him president of a crater. After Dream put up unbreakable walls and burned down his forest. After Tommy called him a monster and blamed him for everything that’s wrong with the nation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You look pretty pathetic there, you know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tubbo whirled around, backing up into the headstone to look up at the figure shadowing him. The silhouette’s almost identical to Puffy’s, but upon closer inspection, he saw it wasn’t Puffy at all. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Schlatt?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Schlatt hung a cigarette in his crooked smile, raising his arms to the navy sky. “The one and only, kid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The blood in his veins went completely still, his breaths creating fog as he tried to cower further into the headstone. “What are you doing here? How-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, relax.” Schlatt’s scoff resonates with the wind. “You’ve been freaking out all day.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>obviously! </span>
  </em>
  <span>I saw a dead man walking and breathing! I imagine Quackity would do the same if he saw you again!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, no. That’s different.” Schlatt brought his cigarette down for a second. His smirk reminds Tubbo of the one he flashed him right before announcing that the festival had been a front for his public execution. “You guys buried my body. You saw me die and you know for certain that I’m not coming back. There wasn’t anything left of Tommy for you to find.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And I took Dream’s word for it…” Tubbo’s head hit the hard rock. He didn’t mind. “Instead of trying to confirm anything for myself, our entire nation jumped on the train.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, that was pretty stupid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What would you have done!?” Tubbo found himself standing in a matter of seconds. The dirt around his feet made a crunching sound underneath his shoes. The flowers he left from yesterday lay there, crushed to pieces. No point in leaving flowers for someone who doesn’t want them. “All the evidence was clearly showing that he died that night!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But would it have been impossible to go search for a body? Or to have pressed Dream for clarification? There’s more you could’ve done. Why didn’t you do it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tommy! </span>
  </em>
  <span>Look at what he’s done in the past! When you exiled him from Manberg, he still came and visited all the time. He built tunnels to sneak in and out. He spied on you guys just because he wanted to! But when I did it, he stayed put. He didn’t move and he never returned! After having radio silence for forever, it made sense to believe him dead.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Schlatt’s smile only grew. “See, I kicked him out to establish my power. I scared everyone, and no one fought back for a while. Was your reason for exiling him any different from mine?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>To intimidate. To show his strength. </span>
  <em>
    <span>To establish power. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, you’re wrong. You banished him unprovoked. I had my reasons. He didn’t care enough about me even then to listen to me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That gets annoying, doesn’t it? To have Quackity in your ear, unfaithful in every decision you make. You’ve got Fundy doubting you all the time and Ranboo, who doesn’t seem very loyal to your leadership. You know that deep down, don’t you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ranboo’s fine!” Tubbo’s had this argument with himself for a week now. “We caught him off guard with the butcher army, that’s all. Tommy was always supposed to be our fourth member. It’s not Ranboo’s fault we got him mixed up in Techno’s execution.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what happened when you saw Tommy with Techno earlier?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Holding in tears around Schlatt was proving to be more and more difficult with every moment that passes. "I never got to say goodbye and he didn't let me say hello."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tommy doesn’t care anymore.” Schlatt shrugged, his white button up scarily similar to Tubbo’s. He took a puff from his cigarette. “He stopped caring the second you exiled him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Unfortunately…” He thought back to their shouting match about the discs. When Tommy revealed his true intentions and admitted to using his position in the government to get his belongings back. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Admitted to using him.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “I think he stopped caring a bit before that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You also thought he was dead. All this talk about graves being the same size when we die… Wilbur doesn't even have one and mine was huge. I wonder what yours is going to look like."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shut </span>
  <em>
    <span>up!” </span>
  </em>
  <span>His voice cracked, and though Schlatt laughs, he couldn’t find it in himself to be embarrassed. While trying not to swallow the lump in his throat, trying not to reach up and wipe the unshed tears from his eyes, he hadn’t realized the smoke that came from the cigarette was tinted blue. “You don’t have to remind me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You also thought you were going to be the president that L’Manberg never had. The one who could keep the peace, not lose his head, and keep all hands on deck at the same time. How well has that worked out for you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s been working. In fact, it’s been near damn perfect. Dream doesn’t bother them anymore, the walls got taken down, and a war never sprouted from the burning of George’s home. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except Dream helped Techno escape, fed him lies, and used George just so he could have a reason to try and regain a hold on L’Manberg again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It worked for about a week,” he admits with defeat. “But it all got messed up when Tommy burned down George’s house! If he had listened to me when I got him out of this mess in the first place, we wouldn’t be here right now! I was never going to exile him, but he left me no choice!” He pauses. “Tommy was never going to be the next Wilbur, but I can’t tell if I’m becoming like you.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look kid, I never listened to anyone in the entirety of my term and now I’m dead. You were miserable, Quackity hated me, and Fundy betrayed me.” Schlatt inhaled deeply, moving his cigarette to the corner of his mouth. “I wanted to run Manberg on my own, but all I did was bring this nation down with me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tubbo looked out to the reconstruction. The light from the coral reef Phil made shines underneath the moonlight, brighter than the end of Schlatt’s cigarette. The last time he saw his reflection, he noticed the water had become a deeper shade of blue than his eyes. Presidency wasn’t nice on Wilbur or Schlatt. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want to ask for help, but they expect me to be professional enough without it. I’m a </span>
  <em>
    <span>kid </span>
  </em>
  <span>that got pushed into a role I wasn’t ready for, but no one understands that! I tried everything, but at the meeting with Dream, both Quackity and Fundy completely disrespected me by siding with Tommy on his little rampage about Spirit. I’m trying my </span>
  <em>
    <span>best here, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but it feels like no one wants to see me in office!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Schlatt’s chuckle wasn’t reassuring. “Maybe they don’t. Maybe they do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Schlatt?” Tubbo drew his eyes downward. He couldn’t look at Schlatt without making it feel too real. “Am I turning into you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The loud groan accompanied by another cigarette puff wasn’t the answer he’s looking for, but he waited patiently. “That’s a tough one. It’s a tough one, kid. Hell, you could even say Quackity’s becoming like me. He’s tried manipulating you a couple times, exerting force at things he wanted. You might not have noticed it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had. “I’m not talking about Quackity, or even Tommy. I need to know about </span>
  <em>
    <span>me. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Am I becoming the same president as you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not corrupting yourself. You’re losing your innocence. There’s a difference, you know? You did what you thought was right. You got backed up into a rough situation. One decision would’ve brought you to war, and the other one-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-cost me my best friend.” Tubbo slowly sank back to the floor, his body slumping against the headstone. “I never wanted to lose him. I visited, but he was never there. And then he started talking about a beach party and all this other stuff but I have no clue what he meant.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re going to need three to four business days to even begin figuring that out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t have the time. I have a nation to run. I’m trying </span>
  <em>
    <span>so hard, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but something </span>
  <em>
    <span>always </span>
  </em>
  <span>gets in the middle. It was Dream, then the impossible spot Tommy put me in, then Techno, then Techno </span>
  <em>
    <span>and </span>
  </em>
  <span>Tommy. Look at what happened today!”</span>
  <span></span><br/>
<span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“What happened?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took him a minute to fully recall everything that proceeded seeing Tommy. “He’s with Techno, and they’d taken a hostage! Tommy! The same Tommy who stood up to Wilbur when he started losing his mind! The same Tommy who lashed out at Techno on my behalf! He's seen the scar that the firework left and yet he's working with him! I...” His shaky breath sounded pitiful to his ears. “I don’t know what to do. Where do I go from here? I gave Techno back the weapon that killed me. I did it without thinking because I got emotional and stopped using my logical thinking. The next time I see it, it’ll probably be the last.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re a smart kid, Tubbo.” He didn’t see Schlatt move from his spot. He threw his cigarette on the grave, using the tip of his shoe to crush it. “You’re doing what’s best for this country. Yes, that includes exiling Tommy. But don’t lose yourself in the process. Look at Wilbur and look at me. No one wants to see you end up like us, least of all Tommy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Doubt that…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No you don’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yes, he does. He doubts it with every part of his being. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s been devastated since he found out about Tommy’s death. He’s only grieved at these ungodly hours when the sky was so dark he couldn’t see what’s in front of him, leaving flowers and allowing whatever animal comes by to take them. But it’s okay, because he buys more and leaves them in front of the grave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is that why you’re leaving blue flowers in front of an alive man’s grave at two in the morning?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Tubbo turned away from Schlatt. He faced the headstone, staring at Tommy’s name that he engraved himself with the broken needle from the compass. Dream said it smashed to pieces when he fainted, landing in the grass and shattering under the weight of his body and sorrows. He’s been putting off asking for help putting it back together. They might see him as weak if he admits he needs something as trivial as a compass to tie him to humanity before he overworked himself to death.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m freezing,” Tubbo mentions. He wants Schlatt to think that’s the reason he coddled closer to the sleek piece of stone with Tommy’s name on it. “Are you usually this cold?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wouldn’t know. I’m not a ghost.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A strong breeze came by, his sweater doing nothing against his shivers. He pulled his beanie down on his ears, but to his distraught, it didn’t do anything. He shouldn’t listen to Ghostbur in the first place when it comes to anything, least of all about protective weather gear. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once the breeze passed, he turned to face Schlatt again. The burnt out cigarette wasn’t on the ground anymore, and Schlatt wasn’t standing over him. He could be surprised, or he could pretend he isn’t. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The line between real and imaginary has been blurring for a long time. He hopes he survives long enough to see if he crosses it or takes a step back. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>so i reaaaaaaaaally wanted to write something about tubbo before the festival stream and its the night before my winter breaks ends so i decided "why not" and came up with this </p><p>writing for the smp is very fun and everyone is very nice :D</p><p> </p><p>vibe with me on tumblr: knightpuffy</p></blockquote></div></div>
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